[FINOS Community] [RFC] Three proposed FINOS Governance Refinements - Community comments due 7/14
Gabriele Columbro
Dear FINOS community,
In April of last year, our Foundation instituted a new governance structure as we transformed from the Symphony Software Foundation into FINOS. By and large, these policies and procedures have stood us in good stead as our collaborative programs have taken shape and grown over the last year.
However, recognizing that no system is perfect and our community is a living, changing thing, we've kept our eyes out for ways to simplify and improve our governance and to make it easier for our community to understand and implement.
Today, we're proposing a few refinements to the FINOS governance which, as reviewed by the M&G Committee in June, are tactical in nature in order to have no or very limited impact on our work:
Consolidating Projects and Working Groups: we are proposing to do away with the distinction between a "project" and a "working group." To date, "project" has referred to a collaborative software development effort and "working group" has meant any other collaborative effort, e.g. a standards-making group. But the governance procedures for the two entities have always been very similar and, in our experience, the distinction has proven more confusing than useful to new contributors. ACTION: Proposal is detailed in the wiki and attached you find amended policies (+redline) to reflect these changes. Please provide feedback for this proposal with comments on the wiki page.
Revising our Project Lifecycle: With the intent of reflecting the increased maturity of our Community, offer a roadmap to create valuable open source projects and give a chance to the whole Community to chime in, we are proposing:
a consolidated set of guidelines for contributors/PMCs to use when proposing/approving a contribution (all Projects enter FINOS in the “Incubating” state) and proposing/approving Activation of a project
to rename the “Released” state to “Active”
ACTION: Proposal is detailed in the wiki. Please provide feedback for this proposal directly with comments on the wiki page.
Clarifying types of Participation: We have made small adjustments to the Participate page to clarify the difference between passive participation, participation and active participation. We also clarified that the purpose of passive participation is to provide a limited audit period to allow an individual to decide whether to participate in a project more fully, and is not intended to be indefinite or used for purposes other than (prospective) collaboration with the project. ACTION: Please provide feedback for this proposal with comments on the wiki page.
If you have overarching feedback in addition to comments on the specific wiki pages, please reply-all to this thread so we can keep the conversation on the list.
We are asking for Community public feedback to these proposals before July 14th (if you don’t have access to the wiki please let us know). Provided there are no major objections, these changes can be put in front of the Board for approval in the upcoming July 17th meeting.
We believe these changes goes in the best interest of the Community at large, by simplifying our governance and creating a virtual roadmap for our Projects to grow into an even more valuable ecosystem.
Thanks and looking forward to your feedback!
The FINOS Team
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